Development woes

Despite a raft of
development projects in Falmouth in recent months, Delroy Christie, President
of the Trelawny Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is calling on the authorities
to move quickly to address what he says are serious deficiencies in the growing
town.

Christie says there are serious and chronic problems
affecting the town including an urgent need for a central sewage system,
regularized garbage collection and disposal, need for parking, major traffic
congestion and lack of adequate drains.

He outlined the problems while speaking in an interview with
the Western Mirror, arguing that the town is reeling from a chronic lack of
supporting infrastructure to complement the development projects. .

“We have a chronic need for a central sewage system; it is
urgent. The problem is that the water table rises everyday in that part of the
parish and everything is old pits and those things don’t function anymore. So
as soon as we have heavy rains, there is raw sewage on the road. It’s as bad as
that,” he said.

Christie explained that Falmouth is a very flat town that is
just a few feet above sea level and with the new developments taking place; the
drains have become overwhelmed with the volume of water now flowing in them, so
drainage is a major problem.

FLOODING

“Development is now outpacing the infrastructure, which
affects the drains which are no longer able to manage the volume of water now
flowing in the town, especially when it rains heavily,” Christie
explained. “So flooding remains a
perennial problem”.

The Chamber president said another pressing issue is a lack
of proper parking and congestion in the town.

“Falmouth is an old English town, which was constructed with
very narrow roads for horse and buggy and things have not changed, so you can’t have vehicles parking on the
streets and people walking on the same strip back and forth. It simply cannot
happen; the streets are too narrow, so we are having a problem”.

He says based on
that, many persons only eye shop in Falmouth, but do real shopping in Montego
Bay.

Efforts to contact Mayor of Falmouth, Colin Gager, for a
comment, proved futile.